


The Gatherers

by JoyfullyyoursDav



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon Universe, Death, Gen, Grim Reapers, Lup-centric, Mortality, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Reapers, Temporary Character Death, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 19:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14527785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoyfullyyoursDav/pseuds/JoyfullyyoursDav
Summary: Lup isn't sure she's cut out for this reaping gig.





	The Gatherers

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first chapter of what will be a longer story about Barry, Lup and Kravitz becoming astral-plane prison abolitionists. Because the concept of the Eternal Stockade bums me out a lot, y'all.
> 
> That's to say, it starts off kinda bleak (Lup's been through a lot!! they all have!!) but it'll go toward a happier place! I almost promise :)
> 
> extra note: edited after originally posting to rearrange the order of events a bit.

Lup is learning what it means to be a reaper.

Reaping involves letting go. This is the first thing she learns. It’s not enough to line the scythe up, feeling your way along the corpse with the tip of the blade until you cut. Though, admittedly, that’s a very important step.

Kravitz stands behind her, guiding her through her first attempt. He sucks in air sharply as she drags her scythe above the corpse, millimeter by millimeter. “You need to _feel_ your way,” he says. “Don’t hold the scythe. _Be_ the scythe. All of your senses should be right at the tip of the blade.”

That part takes some getting used to, but it’s not as difficult as she expected. It’s the next bit Lup struggles with, and will continue to struggle with. The moment when the soul comes up out of the body.

Lup blinks, looking around to find herself in white space. The soul stands before her, staring at her with hollow eyes. “It’s okay,” she says, trying to sound assured.

“Am I…dead?” the soul asks, and Lup feels herself unravel, just a little. It’s a feeling akin to horror, and she doesn’t understand it, so she pushes it down.

“Yes,” Lup says. And the shape of the soul shimmers, fades a little. _Panic,_ Lup thinks. _It’s panicking._ Then she thinks, _It’s?_ Gods. Souls in the white space are hard to see in the way one normally sees, so Lup tries to think about the corpse left behind. The woman with inky black hair. _She_ , not it.

“Everything’s okay,” Lup says. “Just, uh. Follow me.” And she guides the soul through the white space as quickly as possible, not entirely sure where to go. Kravitz said to trust that her feet would lead the way, so she does. And after a few moments, they step onto the Soul Sea, atop its calm waters. They stay there for awhile, silent and unmoving.

Lup is desperate to be done with this part, but the soul isn’t leaving. Then she remembers something else Kravitz said. “Once you’re there,” he explained, “you need to let it go.” So she does. She pries the soul away from her own like it’s a parasite. Discards it in the water with a shake of her hands. The soul immediately disintegrates, turning into bright streaks of light that dance among the rest, and only then does Lup start breathing normally again.

“How’d it go?” Kravitz asks when she returns.

“Crushed it,” Lup tells him. “Made some new broth in the big ol’ soul soup. No problem.”

Kravitz’s eyes get wide. “ _That’s_ not supposed to happen,” he says, and Lup feels like he just grabbed her by the throat.

“What? But—”

Kravitz laughs. “Just kidding,” he says, and Lup forces out laughter that sounds too airy, too much, and if Kravitz notices anything, he doesn’t say so. “You did good,” he tells her, his voice sincere. And for some reason, this kindness twists unpleasantly in her stomach.

From behind her, Barry squeezes her shoulder. She flinches. Just barely, but enough that he notices. His forehead creases in a way that’s become entirely too familiar in the five months that she’s been back. She throws her arms around his neck quickly, as if she can erase one physical response with another. “You better catch up,” she tells him. “I’m one reap ahead of you, babe.”

“You’ll get your first one later today,” Kravitz says, checking his pocket watch. It’s not really a watch, Lup knows. It’s a device that tells him who’s next in line to die, when and where. Knowing that such an object exists is enough to terrify her. When Kravitz asked if she or Barry wanted one, she said, “ _Hell no_. Can’t _you_ just send me on my missions, Night Rider?”

(This earned another forehead-wrinkle from Barry, and _fuck_ , she’d missed him, she loves him, she can’t get enough of him, but if he looks at her like that one more time—like she’s a bomb about to go off, like she’s a puzzle he hasn’t solved yet—she is going to scream. And scream and scream.)

Kravitz claps his hands together. “Alright,” he says. “I guess you two can head home until it’s time for Barry. Tell Taako I’ll be there for dinner.”

* * *

 “How was it?” Taako asks once she and Barry are back. “Was it super creepy?”

Lup opens her mouth to boast, to brush it off like it was nothing. But as soon as she starts to speak, she bursts into tears. It startles her just as much as Barry and Taako, based on their wide-eyed reactions. Lup covers her face with her hands. “Sorry. Sorry,” she says, feeling like a child.

They both come closer, hands on her shoulders. Taako hugs her. Barry kisses her temple. “What’s going _on_?” Barry asks.

She doesn’t know how to answer that. She doesn’t know how to put words to it. But looking at her brother in this moment, she sees Kravitz’s watch. She sees Taako’s soul being pulled from his body, strings of light thrown into water. These thoughts are wordless. Just a feeling, a burning pain in her chest that she can’t explain. “Nothing,” Lup says. “I just—I gotta get used to it, you know? I just gotta get used to it and it’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.”

And she leaves the room quickly, before she slips up and admits to the fear.

* * *

Lup has no right to fear death.

She’s been surrounded by it for over a century. She’s died dozens of times, was technically dead for twelve straight years. She’s killed people directly, and been the reason that thousands more have died. A certain amount of acceptance should have come by now. She should be _used_ to it, at least.

But she’s seen too vividly how death changes people. Death was the reason they made the relics. Items that never should have been made, never _would have_ been made if it wasn’t for all the dying. They were desperate to stop dying. After a hundred years, the fact that death wasn’t permanent for them didn’t matter. In fact, its very impermanence might have been what made it so unbearable: a cycle they couldn’t change, couldn’t even touch. Nothing they did mattered. Everything they did mattered. They were hit with loss and grief and confusion and reunion, over and over and over. Unchanging, and yet, it changed them.

Lup saw firsthand how dying changed every one of them. It changed Lucretia, made her lonely. Made her willing to betray her family, use them as puppets just to make the dying stop. It changed Merle, turned him bitter and cold and shaken in his faith. It changed Davenport, altering his mission from _save the universe_ to _save us, only us_. And she saw how it affected her brother. How it made Taako even more closed off, less likely to trust. In the last few cycles, he barely spoke to anyone outside their crew. He just didn’t see the point.

And so they made the relics, unleashed deadly weapons on a world that wasn’t their own. They watched the death from above like gods. Their own dying had made them reckless, miserable. The dying of the innocents below made them callous, detached, and even more separated from the humanity they were all trying to be part of.

And then, from inside her staff, she watched death follow Taako, Merle and Magnus for a year. She saw the way it loomed over them. The Gauntlet, fire that promised they’d be burned to glass. The Animus Bell, tolling and taunting as it counted down the minutes they had left in Wonderland. And she witnessed, yet _again_ , the same horrible loop they could never break free from, replaying in Refuge. She saw how the pattern inherited from their century-long mission repeated itself there. Merle, Magnus and Taako couldn’t remember this pattern, and so they repeated a shortened version of it. She was forced to watch how dying over and over in that town hardened them, made them careless. Made them feel like they were above dying, untouchable. Until they learned otherwise: that everything they did—every misstep, every angry word, every decision—mattered and affected everything else.

No one’s above death. Not even her.

She’s been regenerated a hundred times. She became  _undead_. Now she’s a reaper, an emissary of the Raven Queen. And she knows it’s all been a desperate attempt to conquer death. Beat it into the ground. Make it stop taking her friends away.

Make it stop. Knowing it can never truly be stopped.


End file.
